"Did he know Count Tolstoy? Everybody knew him. He was the first gentleman in the empire [!]. There was not another such man in all the land." "Could he read? Had he read the count's 'Tales'?" "Yes. He had read every one of the count's books that he could lay his hands on. Did I mean the little books with the colored covers and the pictures on the outside?" (He alluded to the little peasant "Tales" in their original cheap form, costing two or three cents apiece.) "Unfortunately they were forbidden, or not to be had at the Tula shops, and though there were libraries which had them, they were not for such as he."* * At this time, in Moscow, the sidewalk bookstalls, such as this man would have been likely to patronize, could not furnish a full set of the _Tales_ in the cheap form. The venders said that they were "forbidden;" but since they openly displayed and sold such as they had, and since any number of complete sets could be obtained at the publishers' hard by, the prohibition evidently extended only to the issue of a fresh edition. Meanwhile, the _Tales_ complete in one volume were not forbidden. This volume, one of the set of the author's works published by his wife, cost fifty kopeks (about twenty-five cents), not materially more than the other sort. As there was a profit to the family on this edition, and none on the cheap edition, the withdrawal of the latter may have been merely a private business arrangement, to be expected under the circumstances, and the cry of "prohibition" may have been employed as a satisfactory and unanswerable tradesman's excuse for not being supplied with the goods desired. "How had they affected him? Why, he had learned to love all the world better. He knew that if he had a bit of bread he must share it with his neighbor, even if he did find it hard work to support his wife and four small children. Had such a need arisen? Yes; and he had given his children's bread to others." (He pretended not to hear when I inquired why he had not given his own share of the bread.) "Was he a more honest man than before? Oh, yes, yes, indeed! He would not take a kopek from any one unless he were justly entitled to it." "And Count Tolstoy! A fine man, that! The Emperor had conferred upon him the right to release prisoners from the jail,--had I noticed the big jail, on the left hand as we drove out of town?" (I took the liberty to doubt this legend, in strict privacy.) "Tula was a very bad place; there were many prisoners. Men went to the bad there from the lack of something to do." (This man was a philosopher, it seemed.)